June 18, 2014

At yesterday's CNN Town Hall with Hillary Clinton, a Maryland teacher named Gail Santa Maria expressed concern about school shootings and asked whether "reinstating the ban on assault weapons and banning high capacity magazines would do any good?" Hillary broke in and said: "Yes, I do. I do." That got loud, sustained applause from the very friendly audience.

Gail Santa Maria had put one thing in question form, and that was enough to send Hillary Clinton into her "guns" riff. When Hillary got to the end of that riff, Gail Santa Maria said: "My question is, why does anyone..." And the moderator, Christiane Amanpour, cut her off with a stern "You just had a question. Sorry, ma'am" and moved on. That made me feel bad for the school teacher, who was an unusually timorous lady. And yet... the pacing cannot slow way down for humble little people like this.

But in fact, the school teacher was not too timorous to talk over Hillary and say "74 more" when Hillary said the line "the horrors of the shootings at Sandy Hook and now we've had more in the time since." Hillary's "more" triggered the teacher's "74 more," a repetition of the dubious factoid that is getting lodged in voters' brains. Hillary herself never uttered the dubious factoid, but her "more" made the timid schoolteacher say "74 more." No one is accountable for that heavily inflated number, but we heard it. We heard it as if we were hearing our own internal voice. Yes, we already know that. The number is 74.

Now, let's get into the substance of Hillary's "guns" riff, which contains the amazing assertion that I've put in the post title. She begins:

First of all, I think as a teacher or really any parent, what's been happening with these school shootings should cause everybody to just think hard.

"Hard" is Hillary's key word. It's her book title — "Hard Choices" — and it's an all-purpose boast and excuse. She's capable of doing what's hard and, when things are hard, one can't be expected to get everything exactly right. And yes, "hard" invites her critics to mock her in a sexual way, as Rush Limbaugh did on his show yesterday: Hard Choices? Hard?!! That's going to make everyone think of Bill Clinton's erections. I'm paraphrasing. What Rush said was: "Now, if Bill had a book and the title of that was Hard Choices with the foreword by Monica Lewinsky, then maybe you might have a book that would walk itself off the shelves."

Back to the town hall transcript. We've seen that Hillary has led off with her core theme: It's hard.
Which seems to say: We all should just first pause and think about how hard it all is. She expands on hardness:

We make hard choices and we balance competing values all the time.

This might make you think she's about to give a balanced presentation with careful attention to the opinions and preferences of those who see deep meaning in the right to bear arms. But the values on one side of this values competition dominate:

And I was disappointed that the Congress did not pass universal background checks after the horrors of the shootings at Sandy Hook and now we've had more... in the time since.

And I don't think any parent, any person should have to fear about their child going to school or going to college because someone, for whatever reasons -- psychological, emotional, political, ideological, whatever it means -- could possibly enter that school property with an automatic weapon and murder innocent children, students, teachers.

I'm well aware that this is a hot political subject.

Hot political subject, yes, but I thought you said there were values here and that it was hard to balance them. Are the gun-rights people just political heat you have to face or do you genuinely contemplate their values?

And again, I will speak out no matter what role I find myself in.

That's the next line because she mentioned politics, and she must always pose as if she has not yet decided to run for President.

But I believe that we need a more thoughtful conversation.

Yes? Do tell. We're going to balance those competing values? We're going to cool down and actually think about everything? NO! The next thing she says is:

We cannot let a minority of people -- and that's what it is, it is a minority of people -- hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.

Whoa! That's the line I was looking for. Read it again and see how shocking it is. Not only did Hillary completely turn her back on "balanc[ing] competing values" and "more thoughtful conversation," she doesn't want to allow the people on one side of the conversation even to believe what they believe. Those who care about gun rights and reject new gun regulations should be stopped from holding their viewpoint. Now, it isn't possible to forcibly prevent people from holding a viewpoint. Our beliefs reside inside our head. And in our system of free speech rights, the government cannot censor the expression of a viewpoint. But the question is Hillary Clinton's fitness for the highest office, and her statement reveals a grandiose and profoundly repressive mindset.

I'm sure if she'd anticipated this criticism, she would have reworded it and made it clear that her point was only that in a democracy, the majority should win. Even that is open to critique. The majority only wins with respect to thing that are determined by majoritarian decisionmaking. Some things are reserved to individuals, and we could have thoughtful conversations — if we wanted to do some hard intellectual work — about what matters belong to the individual and not to the majority. What gun rights are to some Americans abortion rights are to others.

But Hillary leaps over these hard questions.

So, my view is that yes, we need to thrash this out in the political realm.

Thrash? Is thrashing "thoughtful"? Is thrashing the balancing of an array of values? Apparently, this isn't even a hard choice. The good people already know the answer:

But the vast majority of Americans, even law abiding gun owners, people... who want background checks that work, information that is shared immediately, and an awareness that, you know, we're going to have to do a better job protecting the vast majority of our citizens, including our children, from that very, very, very small group that is unfortunately prone to violence and now with automatic weapons can wreak so much more violence than they ever could have before.

The vast majority of Americans want to protect the vast majority of our citizens. At that level of generality, who can disagree? And I guess she gets to her "vast majority" by including all the people — like the NRA — who want effective enforcement of background checking requirements already on the books. Obviously, no one worth talking about wants murder, but that wasn't the topic we were supposedly about to have a thoughtful conversation about.

Hillary Clinton poses as the coolly thoughtful presider over a national conversation, but if you listen to what she's saying, she already has her answers and she's not going to let hold you hold any other viewpoint. The woman who once famously said...

I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic...

... is now ready to deploy the verb "to terrorize" against those who debate and disagree with her.

Yes, I'm going to be that guy who says, "automatic weapons?" Has there been a single school shooting in the history of the United States that involved automatic weapons? I don't think there has been one anywhere outside the Middle East and Beslan. And it isn't just a slip of the tongue, she says it twice.

More imprecise language games, just like the constant conflation of "immigration" with "illegal immigration."

"[S]he already has her answers and she's not going to let hold you hold any other viewpoint."

Sounds just like Ann Althouse, who once claimed to never, ever be wrong.

Althouse, you just don't like her, and you never will. Whether it's jealousy of her as a more successful woman of your generation or as someone whose opinions carry much more influence than yours, please don't try to intellectualize your bias. You look like a terrible hypocrite.

As with Obama, how many of us will lap up the "feeling" of her words without the slightest recognition of the actual content? The Founders always knew that the strength of democracy depended entirely on the civic virtues of the citizenry, which is why they devised a limited government based on an explicit grant of powers, so that BS artists like Hillary! could do minimum damage to the body politic, even if they took advantage of a temporary mass derangement. But combine the slippery slope of an ever-increasing government machine, a citizenry who feels rather than thinks, and demagogues convinced that they need to take care of us and you have something neither the Founders nor Lincoln would recognize.

No wonder Bill has cheated on her throughout their marriage. What a control freak she is. And someone needs to explain to her what an automatic weapon is. It's something that shoots multiply times with one pull of the trigger. Like Bill's dick. Not that she understands that either.

There have been no mass shootings with automatic weapons. Every other weapon, including single shot devices, is a semi-automatic weapon. Either way you get to say automatic and that is the main thing. That and 74.

" Now, it isn't possible to forcibly prevent people from holding a viewpoint. "

Like it was when the Gay Thugs went after anybody who had donated to the CA Prop 8 Campaign?

Or when Governor Cuomo said, "“The Republican Party candidates are running against the SAFE Act — it was voted for by moderate Republicans who run the Senate! Their problem is not me and the Democrats; their problem is themselves. Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.”

To the reeducation camps or better yet, the vats with thee, you lifest!!

That 74 thing, for some reason I'm always amazed how fast a lie can become a parroted truth in the cultural hivemind (even though I shouldn't be).

I always find these sorts of TV events revolting. Everything is so fake, predetermined, and contrived I can never watch them. Our entire process for selecting a president in our modern times is repulsive to me.

"Many of you are well enough off that the tax cuts may have helped you. We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." Senator Hillary Clinton, June 28, 2004

Zeifman contends that in 1974 a young lawyer who shared an office with Clinton came to him to apologize that he and Clinton had lied to him. The lawyer, John Labovitz, is quoted as saying that he was dismayed with "...her erroneous legal opinions and efforts to deny Nixon representation by counsel -- as well as an unwillingness to investigate Nixon."

The reasoning is also interesting. Ted Kennedy feared that Nixon, if impeached, would being up evidence of John Kennedy's actions in the White House.

The "74" has been thoroughly debunked numerous times. That doesn't stop Hillary from using made-up facts and junk science whenever it suits her, of course.

I do understand that many liberals are terrorized by guns, period, making no distinction between guns in the hands of inner city gang bangers and guns in the hands of ordinary citizens exercising their right to self defense. I note that in big cities such as Chicago and Washington, DC, the stringent anti-gun laws were only ever exercised against the latter, and there never was any effort to disarm the criminal element (New York's "stop and frisk" being the major exception).

At any rate, I think that the "vast majority" of American citizens are not particularly terrorized by legal guns in private ownership where the owners have passed background checks. I think the terror is limited to a few kooks.

Hillary Clinton is a smart person who studied political science in college and law post-grad. She has read The Federalist Papers, Montesquieu, Mill, and America's founding documents.

So she knows what "tyranny of the majority" means, and what "inalienable rights" are.

She does not deploy such concepts in her thinking and speaking, though. I suspect that the Professor has her nailed here: Hillary Clinton doesn't think that way. She thinks her own philosophies should trump everyone else's.

9:35: "Althouse, you just don't like her, and you never will. Whether it's jealousy of her as a more successful woman of your generation ...."

H-m-m, let's see, political hack vs. tenured law professor. I'm no Althouse defender and I'm a former elected official, but I say the measure of success is how well you do your job. By that measure, Hillary has not been successful at anything since she left the Rose Law Firm.

"We cannot let a minority of people -- and that's what it is, it is a minority of people -- hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people."If a repub said this it would be rephrased:We cannot let minorities terrorize people.Discuss

Well, if we're going to ban "automatic weapons," we should also ban rayguns, and most especially phased plasma rifles in the 40 watt range. After all, they've all been involved in the same number of school shootings: ZERO

I love how she is off on the background check thing, without really knowing what she is talking about. But, it sounds good, and the left loves it. So, she said it. Deep down, I have no doubt that she is a gun grabber like few in this country - it is just how autocrats like her think.

The problem is, and will continue to be, that a lot of firearms transactions fly under fed radar. Not when buying guns from someone engaged in the business (including, yes, at gun shows), but the rest of the time. When people die, with guns in their estates. When you buy a gun for your kid at Christmas. Or, the guy down the block trades a gun for a chainsaw (actually, that sort of trading is very popular in parts of rural America). Some of the background check proposals are so bad, that you would need a formal background check to loan someone a gun at the range, with you standing right next to them. When the proposed laws say "no transfers", that is what they are talking about - no one can touch your gun without a background check. Not your wife, your siblings, your best friend of 50 years. No one. And, no one should be surprised that Hillary! would back it.

I also liked that Ann caught Hillary! trying to slide around the 2nd Amdt. This is specifically not one of those things subject to majoritarian rule. Not even close. It is a fundamental enumerated right in our Constitution, and requires a super, super, majority to change. And, it was put there almost specifically for people like Hillary!, when the anti-federalists finally overcame the federalists in terms of protecting fundamental rights from majoritarian excesses.

I'm sure if she'd anticipated this criticism, she would have reworded it and made it clear that her point was only that in a democracy, the majority should win. Even that is open to critique. The majority only wins with respect to things that are determined by majoritarian decision making. Some things are reserved to individuals, and we could have thoughtful conversations — if we wanted to do some hard intellectual work — about what matters belong to the individual and not to the majority. What gun rights are to some Americans abortion rights are to others.

Bad form Ann! This is a Representative Democracy and might (or majority) should not always make right. The fact that she meant it and you said it is the shame. You should (could) have made that point.

Additionally she incorrectly says (and I am not sure if on purpose or not) "automatic weapons" when rarely are "automatic weapons" used by non-Government persons in shootings. If they are used they are extremely likely to be illegally obtained so all the rest of the rules and regulations amount to squat. Legally owning fully-automatic weapons (which is the definition of "automatic weapons") is a expensive and hard process so those that take the trouble are not likely to then use them in a crime.

What she should have said was "semi-automatic weapons" but that does carry quite the "fear tag" that the other term does or she is completely ignorant about guns.

There was a recent school shooting by some guy with a shotgun at Seattle Pacific College. She is weaving that into her messaging. Of course, the shotgun is referred to as an automatic weapon in her re-telling.

Like the current occupant of the White House Hilary! is a totalitarian at heart and has -- as famously defined by Michael Kinsley -- committed a "gaffe." That is, she accidentally told the truth when revealing that she wished to eliminate opposing viewpoints. And like Obama she will need an army of straw men for her to torch on her way to making that happen. For proof, see "automatic weapons" above.

We cannot let a minority of people -- and that's what it is, it is a minority of people -- hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.

If Hillary's the Democratic candidate for President in 2016, I would recommend to the Communist Workers Party that they vote Republican. At least if they wish to continue holding those odious minority viewpoints.

To clarify my 10:10: Most politicians and many people, particularly Democrats, think the measure of success for a politician is getting re-elected. Obama has contributed to that state of mind which he obviously shares.

We cannot let a minority of people -- and that's what it is, it is a minority of people -- hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.

Believing in the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people?

No.

For the most part, these people who talk about "guns" do not know the difference between a semi-automatic and an actual automatic weapon. Their focus on so-called "assault weapons" proves their ignorance.

"...A minority..." These people don't get it that the reason the NRA is "so powerful" is because so many people agree with them. If they didn't, they would not be powerful.

Yay, we've got an excellent chance of getting 8 years of this, all because ... vagina.

There is a very short (25 minute) movie titled "13" which was made in 1955 which details the life of a troubled teen. If you have the TCM app you can watch it now. Amazing to see how an incident of gun violence was handled. In 1955.It was stunning to watch the scene where the schools guidance counselor walked the boy home and handed the gun back to the stepfather.

The interesting thing is will Obama throw her under his bus before he leaves office? If she starts to nitpick his policies and performance, I bet he will. And at some point, Hillary has to distance herself from his failed economy policies and record.

Yes, but for her it's just a word she uses to avoid saying anything of substance, anything that might qualify as politically hard. It's a word that, in Hillary-speak, is usually packaged with an injunction to "think hard" or some equally squishy equivalent. Evidently, Hillary! expects everyone to skip over the fact that, as an all-but-declared candidate for the presidency, we expect her already to have 'thought hard' about the issues she wants to deal with if elected, and to tell us what she would do about it. But she has no intention of doing that -- instead, she sticks to verbal mush, a fair selection of which is featured in this blogpost.

The second fact about Hillary! that jumps out is that she is not particularly adept at speaking without a script. The silliness about a 'viewpoint' that 'terrorizes' is just one of many similar verbal screw-ups for her. In the same vein, she is quite sloppy even in her prepared spiels, as in this one about guns. For example, she evidently does not understand that automatic weapons have been illegal in the US for a long time. For someone who has been a fixture on the national scene for 20+ years, that is a remarkable failing.

All of that is quite dangerous for a candidate already suffering from a trust deficit with the public. She comes across as charmless stiff determined never to level with the public, and whose every utterance is dictated by whatever the polling and focus groups tells her might work.

How many of the recent mass/school shootings would have been stopped by these background checks and high capacity magazine bans?

Off the top of my head, the school shootings have recently been done with guns legally obtained by their owners who were either the shooters themselves or the parents.The Oregon and California shootings didn't involve high capacity magazines.I'm not sure if we know yet where the Las Vegas/non school shooters got their guns. These were not real governmenty people, so I'm guessing the laws meant little to them.

Now, if people want there to be some personality testing involved in background checks, they should say so. If they want medical records included in background checks, they should say so.

I'm like everyone else- I don't want anymore mass shootings. They horrify me. But people sound so hollow when they just declare "Not one more!" and "more gun control" and "i'm against guns" while offering up solutions that would not have stopped any of these shootings.

74 acts of bestiality committed just this year by leading democrats. What a horrific fact. 74 times kind and gentle innocent creatures of Mother Gaia have be brutalized by leading democrats.

I call upon all leading democrats to stop this holocaust of sacrilegious debasement. By passing powerful new laws giving us far more power over the day to day actions of leading democrats. Just think of the crying baby puppies!

"And I don't think any parent, any person should have to fear about their child going to school or going to college because someone, for whatever reasons -- psychological, emotional, political, ideological, whatever it means -- could possibly enter that school property with an automatic weapon and murder innocent children, students, teachers. "

I don't either, which is why guards! with a gun should be at every school. We do it for banks and court rooms. We can do it for schools.And metal detectors.

When I went to high school they installed metal detectors. And I assumed that there were some security that had access to guns. If they didn't they should have. We didn't have school shootings, but we had plenty of kids bringing knives to school. Schools need to be fortresses against people who want to come in.If you value your kids treat them like your bank treats your money.

The fundamental problem is that both in small and big things the Obama administration has poisoned its information stores... What the administration needs most is the truth — about something — anything. It needs a starting point.

It is my belief that the school shooting phenomenon-- and that "74" number is a huge lie-- is directly rooted in the vilification of firearms by the leftist education apparatus.

When shooting was a widely accepted, even admired skill, whether for sport, self-defense or the defense of the republic, these events were extremely rare. By vilifying guns, educators have given them an aura of transgression.

This is ultimately what the Dylan Klebolds and Rodger Elliotts are seeking. They have been forced to swallow ignominy, forced by the system to suppress hostility, forbidden to work things out with their fists as teenagers have done for millennia. What they seek is the greatest transgression available to them. They have been taught that guns are evil, so when they choose to do evil they use guns.

Nothing new here--Hillary has a bit of a fascist streak. If you thought Obama's respect for the rule of law and processes was dismal, you ain't seen nothing yet.

I also like how despite all their anti-gun rhetoric, hacks like Hillary (and Obama for that matter) seem to favor rather weak wristed solutions. Universal background checks. Was it really a lack of background checks that caused the latest mass shootings? Assault weapons bans. Were these shootings done with assault weapons that would have been covered by the ban? If so, would the shootings still have been deadly with legal firearms?

They still fear the NRA and gun owners to such an extent they're afraid to say what they really want to do--eliminate private gun ownership or reduce it to such a small fraction that gun crimes would be far fewer and farther between. This would require house-to-house sweeps, mass confiscations of property, shutting down of manufacturers and dealers. But they know this would never stand, as any Democrat elected in a rural area would be driven from office. So they push these worthless piecemeal ideas that would inconvenience gun owners and sellers but do nothing towards reducing the number of guns out there or the number of shootings.

I heard the same class of thoughts from Diane Feinstein back in her early senatorial years, regarding the First amendment. Shockingly, she was not called on it by any of the fine donors or journalists in the room.If you watch and read enough political exchanges, you will actually often hear speakers reveal their true thoughts and thought processes. It's not hard, it just requires paying attention. The media types usually let this kind of rhetoric through, since it does not trigger any alarms in their minds.

The Republican's in Congress just to have fun with her hypocrisy ought to propose that she and her husband be stripped of their Secret Service protection. Those bad boys not only carry guns but they carry automatic weapons! Lets dispense with her hypocrisy, her life is isn't worth more than that of the average person and considering the harm she has done her's is worth considerably less than that of the average person's. Bill's life isn't worth a dog's turd either so no need to waste money and risking innocent bystander's lives either.

The only way to enforce a Universal Backgroud check regime is to have a universal registry. And as Australia and New York have shown, a universal registry is the first step on the road to confiscation.

Here's something that could pass - give private parties access to the NICS background check system. Here's the issue - let's say I live in one of the majority of states where is is perfectly legal to make a private in-state sale of a long gun without going through an FFL (a holder of a Federal Firearms License - i.e. a licenses gun dealer). And let's say I am both good hearted and liability-averse, and so before I sell my old $150 shotgun to Joe down the street, I would like to do a background check on him - it's not required, but I don't want to get sued if Joe later goes postal. So now I have to go to an FFL and have him perform the transfer, for which he will charge me $30-50. On a $150 sale.

So, my view is that yes, we need to thrash this out in the political realm.

What this dim bulb doesn't seem to realize (or at least doesn't dare acknowledge)is that we HAVE trashed this out in the political realm. Her side keeps losing, over and over again. Even after horrific occurrences used by the media at large to aruge for her side, she still loses. There has been a conversation, there have been votes. Her side lost. They continue to lose. They don't want a conversation, a vote, or a "thrashing out," they just want to win. Boo damn hoo, lady; if mean ol' Wayne LaPierre and his tiny band of fanatics are really all that the other side has it's only a relfection on how crappy you are that they keep winning. "Vote for me, I've been powerless to overcome a tiny minority we all oppose!"

It's amusing when Hillary and other ILliberal gun control advocates lecture to us without even the most basic knowledge about guns. How many of the school shootings most commonly referred to involved automatic weapons? Answer: Zero. The National Firearms Act of 1934 outlawed automatic weapons possession. Now if they were really serious about eliminating automatic weapons in the U.S. they might start with the gangs that terrorize mostly low income neighborhoods in cities across the country. But doing so might anger their base. So the Kabuki theater against legal firearms ownership plays on...

Gun rights are in the constitution. Abortion rights aren't. Yet liberals want to deny people the right to things in the constitution but any restrictions on abortion are a war on women.How many restrictions are already on guns? The libs are saying you should be able to have a school help a girl get an abortion absent her parents persmission. But saying no to THAT is a war on women.How many abortions are there, versus how many school shootings.

Heyooyeh said..."[S]he already has her answers and she's not going to let hold you hold any other viewpoint."

Sounds just like Ann Althouse, who once claimed to never, ever be wrong.

Althouse, you just don't like her, and you never will. Whether it's jealousy of her as a more successful woman of your generation or as someone whose opinions carry much more influence than yours, please don't try to intellectualize your bias. You look like a terrible hypocrite.

6/18/14, 9:35 AM

Heyooyeh's timeline:

1. Hillary makes a fascist statement.

2. Althouse calls out fascist statement as fascist.

3. Althouse is a jealous hypocrite because any woman that disagrees with Hillary is jealous of her success.

4. Heyooyeh fails to name a single Hillary accomplishment during her entire life in politics that didn't result from a payoff or crony favor.

madashell wrote:There was a recent school shooting by some guy with a shotgun at Seattle Pacific College. She is weaving that into her messaging. Of course, the shotgun is referred to as an automatic weapon in her re-telling.

Didnt' Joe Bidden say to get shotguns instead of automatic weapons? How then is it possible that one was used in a school shooting?

"The Republican's in Congress just to have fun with her hypocrisy ought to propose that she and her husband be stripped of their Secret Service protection. Those bad boys not only carry guns but they carry automatic weapons! Lets dispense with her hypocrisy, her life is isn't worth more than that of the average person and considering the harm she has done her's is worth considerably less than that of the average person's. Bill's life isn't worth a dog's turd either so no need to waste money and risking innocent bystander's lives either."

That goes for any celebrity with bodyguards. No more guns for you and your family.

"[S]he already has her answers and she's not going to let hold you hold any other viewpoint."

Sounds just like Ann Althouse, who once claimed to never, ever be wrong.

Althouse, you just don't like her, and you never will. Whether it's jealousy of her as a more successful woman of your generation or as someone whose opinions carry much more influence than yours, please don't try to intellectualize your bias. You look like a terrible hypocrite."

So, you don't really have a substantial argument with which to rebut, then.

I think there are a lot of pantie-wetters who don't even know what "semi-automatic" means.

I once had this conversation with someone over at the Isthmus Forum who claimed that the Newtown shooter used an automatic weapon. When I tried to correct him (or her) he said that the only difference between "automatic" and "semi-automatic" is semantic and they mean the same thing.

How is it possible to even have a meaningful conversation with someone so ignorant?

I blame the schools. I learned gun safety and riflery with a .22 at school, in class. Not after school. Also learned archery just in case.

Lest you think this was out in the stix somewhere, it was in Alexandria VA, literally within sight of the Washington Monument. Very progressive school, fully integrated (students and teachers) in 1949.

It's a shame our kids can't get a useful education in public schools these days.

If she really wanted to reduce school shootings and other mass killings she could simply ask her friends in the LSM (lying sack media) to STOP PUBLICIZING THE NAMES AND FACES of the wack-jobs who do the shooting! You know, if we never hear their names and faces and see their "manifestos" then they really can't inspire copycat crimes, can they?

For this same reason, the NFL does not allow people who disrupt football games to be shown on TV. In this way the incentive for others to follow suit is reduced to near zero. Also, near zero is where her chances for elective office will be if she keeps talking like this in public.

They grew up hearing the myth of the "stork's delivery". Most rationalize abortion/murder because they believe life is a miracle of spontaneous conception. The more "logical" rationalize it as a defense to prevent an act of involuntary exploitation (i.e. child's evolution from conception to birth). It is a great comfort for millions of women, girls, men, and boys that they are not committing premeditated murder of a wholly innocent human life. The government, experts, and advocates told them so, repeatedly.

That said, don't harsh their mellow. The ten thousand or so people murdered by mostly government agents, criminals, or themselves are more important than the million people murdered every year for money, sex, convenience, and to reduce the problem set (i.e. population control).

Anyway, I understand why they want abortion/murder; but, considering the extraordinary mental gymnastics required to rationalize it, they should be capable of recognizing better choices. Their irrational fear of guns, unsupported by the statistics, unsupported by actual events, leads me to believe they will never appreciate their dissonance.

"And I was disappointed that the Congress did not pass universal background checks after the horrors of the shootings at Sandy Hook and now we've had more... in the time since."

Sandy Hook?

!. Lanza had attempted to buy a firearm at least once - and did not pass the "non-mandatory universal" check. Oh my. 2. He committed murder, indeed matricide, BEFORE having a firearm, in order to steal firearms (no, Wikipedia, he did NOT "shoot" his mother). Multiple offenses far more serious than teaching your 11-year-old firearm safety.

I have not heard a single proposed bit of legislation that would have stopped him, have you? Even a mandatory psych eval (which after all, he had) cannot be relied upon to spot a real vs potential vs non- threat. Too, how about stopping him at least just after the first murder? Not so easy, is it?

More, if you look around. I don't own, or even much want to own, a firearm, but the use of the blood of children to make an irrelevant political argument is pretty low. Nor do I mind if my neighbors (well, most of them, heh) have weaponry.

The possession and use of firearms by anyone other than the purchaser are now illegal and subject to deeper scrutiny.

Yeah, that would have stopped Lanza, and other people who ignore proscriptive laws and regulations.

It's also telling that certain people are entrusted with a right to self-defense, but the majority should be denied, because the trust is not mutual. There is a presumption of guilt until proven innocent which has tarnished many movements, including those calling to disarm law-abiding Americans.

It's similar to the logic which rationalizes expanded federal security, which targets Americans personally and economically, while permitting around one million aliens to illegally enter this nation annually. As well as turning a blind eye to trillion dollar deficits, and other labor and currency devaluing measures.

People like Mrs. Clinton and Pres. Obama are constantly frustrated that they - who are smarter than us, more moral than us and just flat know better than us - are blocked by regressives and a Constitution that is obviously not suited for 21st Century America from organizing and running our lives the way that they know best for us.

"Hillary has a bit of a fascist streak."

That's like saying that Bill has a bit of a problem keeping his cock in his pants.

Since she discovered, at the age of 14, that for people less fortunate than herself the world could be very cruel, Hillary Rodham Clinton has harbored an ambition so large that it can scarcely be grasped.

She would like to make things right.

She is 45 now and she knows that the earnest idealisms of a child of the 1960's may strike some people as naive or trite or grandiose. But she holds to them without any apparent sense of irony or inadequacy. ... She would like to make the world a better place -- as she defines better. ...

When it is suggested that she sounds as though she's trying to come up with a sort of unified-field theory of life, she says, excitedly, "That's right, that's exactly right!" ...

"Let us be willing," she urged in conclusion, "to remold society by redefining what it means to be a human being in the 20th century, moving into a new millennium."

"So why not give me the ability to call NICS directly to do the check. "

It's a privacy issue, for one thing. And FFL who accesses the system is a known entity, regulated and monitored by the ATF, and has already looked at your picture ID and decided it's likely enough to be valid, and is only running the check because they think they're really about to make an actual sale.

None of this would apply to Joe Random accessing the NICS over the web...

Read a novel by Bill Quick (Daily Pundit) a couple of months ago-- not Stendhal or Dickens or Mann but a decent story-- and two of the characters are personae lifted from Mr and Mrs Clinton. Unfortunately, whenever I now read about yet another of the real Mrs Clinton's gaffes I can't help but think of the Quickian version.

Scott Walker saying it isn't the governor's job to change the Constitution wasn't a waffle --- it was a core statement of principle.

I note that because THIS is the polar opposite of that.

Althouse, you just don't like her, and you never will. Whether it's jealousy of her as a more successful woman of your generation or as someone whose opinions carry much more influence than yours, please don't try to intellectualize your bias. You look like a terrible hypocrite.

True, the prof didn't ride her husband's coattails to power and then fail to a damned thing for 30 yrs plus...

You can all mock Hillary, but how many of YOU have dodged sniper fire like she did in Bosnia?

Technically, hasn't about 99% of the world dodged sniper fire the way she did?

A viewpoint is an idea. Ideas exist in the mind. Terror is something that only occurs in the mind.

Not in the mind of somebody with the viewpoint.

It's like saying FDR supported the Holocaust because anti-Semitism was an ideology while he was in the White House.

Someone needs to look at the Clinton's investment portfolio and seem if they are invested in gun related stocks. She keeps talking like this and the guns and ammo will fly off the shelves again the hilbots will wonder about the paranoia of the right for possibly thinking she supports taking their guns.

The context of Shrillary's comments was guns/shootings, but her threats against anyone who disagrees with her or her Agenda ("terrorizers") places disagreeing U.S. citizens in the same (a)legal category as Guantanamo detainees.

Note the enthusiastic applause and agreement with her anti-American hate-speech.

More tilling of the Poisoned Field that America has become. Hillary and friends are sculpting the "necessary" psychological future, which then excuses the Hard Measures that the little snowflake so desperately desires.

Automatic weapons have, in fact, been used in school shootings. And in some of the 74 school shootings since Sandy Hook. But also hundreds of times in NDs by unsafe right-wing wackos who have no idea about weapon retention.